How can we put this? "Guru" is doo-doo

Say what you will about the messy Mike Myers comedy "The Love Guru," but at least it doesn't waste any time. At somewhere near the 30-second mark, it gets right down to business, and that business is the kind of humor that doesn't usually get named in this paper. (Can I call it a rhymes-with-shtick joke? A private-detective joke? A short-for-Richard joke?) And then on the movie goes, swiftly and mercilessly, to dimwitted gags about food that resembles genitalia, urine-soaked-mop fights, chastity belts and what elephants drop onto the people standing behind them at the end of a long day — which is, come to think of it, as good a metaphor as any for the experience of watching this movie.

Myers, as he demonstrated in the (somewhat funnier, though still uneven) Austin Powers movies, never met an excrement joke he didn't like, and the constant barrage of below-the-belt humor in "Love Guru" pretty much substitutes for a plot. Decked out in a curly beard and impish smile, he plays Guru Pitka, an American raised in India (in a village called — wait for it — Harenmahkeester) and schooled alongside the young Deepak Chopra by a wise yet eccentric guru (Ben Kingsley, collecting what I devoutly hope was a very nice check).

Now grown up, so to speak, he's a philosophizing celebrity in L.A. but still plays second fiddle to Chopra. Hoping to raise his profile (OK, every phrase I'm writing here suddenly sounds kind of dirty), Pitka's agent Dick Pants (sigh) gets him a new gig: helping the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team owner, Jane (Jessica Alba), save her star player (Romany Malco) from romantic distraction.

Alba, of course, is so beautiful the movie seems to screech to a halt every time she smiles; indeed, director Marco Schnabel keeps cutting randomly to shots of her face, as if desperately trying to perk things up. (See what I mean?) But her performance here consists mostly of winsome grins punctuated by some world-class hair-tossing and the occasional furrowed brow. She's given no opportunity to be funny, which means we get no break from Myers and his frolicky shtick — except when Verne "Mini-Me" Troyer, as the Maple Leaf coach, gets used as a puck, or when Justin Timberlake (yes, Justin Timberlake) plays a character who's got, shall we say, karma so big his shorts can barely contain it. Myers seems to wander through the movie in his own world, rarely connecting with the other actors.

There are occasional bits of genuine humor in "The Love Guru" (such as Myers appearing, rather surreally, in a cameo as himself), and the movie actually becomes pleasurable in the few moments when it slips into parody of Bollywood musicals — Alba, who dances with a loopy glee, is particularly adorable. But mostly it's just preadolescent humor with a few sitars thrown in; endless variations on an already limp theme.

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725 or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com